It is no secret that I love dramatic lighting. And I love shooting indoors, especially during the winter months. But as the winter drags on, I feel the need to get a little creative to keep all of my pictures from looking the same. One of my favorite things to do is to play with lighting.

Lighting is the most important factor to me when I am pulling together and idea for an image.

If the lighting is boring, there are very few cases I can think of when just a pure moment, or expression, or captured emotion, made a wow! image for me. Would I ditch those images capturing amazing emotion (with so so lighting)? With my mommy goggles on, no way! Absolutely not! (I would never throw away those precious images)…but, mommy goggles off, nope, not a chance of adding it to my portfolio. And whether you are in business or not, building a collection of images that you can be proud of, where the technical aspects of photography and emotive aspects come together, should be important to you!

 Nikon 105mm f/2.8G |  ISO 500  f/5.6  1/80 (little slow there)

Today, I am going to talk about using natural reflectors to light your subject and how you can use it along with the inverse square law.

A reflector is a tool that you use to bounce light back onto your subject. I have this one from Photovision . They are usually white, but you can also get silver/gold to cool/warm your image. So a natural reflector is something that is already there reflecting light. There is nothing extra to put into place, it just happens to be there in nature, in or in this case, your home.

It can be the hardwood floor, carpet, couch, the wall, white bedspread, or a white baseboard or door. Basically, anything that light is hitting and bouncing off of can be used as a natural reflector. Lighter colors work best as darker colors absorb more of the light and are less reflective. Because I love dramatic lighting so much, I’m going to talk about what I call “hot spots” and using those as natural reflectors.

In photography, I can think of two ways that the term “hot spot” can be used.

Hot Spot:
1. A blown out area. An area in an image where one, two, or all three of the channels are blown, where there is decreased or total lack of detail in highlights. When all three channels are blown, it will be a bright white area in the image.

2. An area on a surface where direct light is shining in through a window. Hot spots provide areas of intense bright light streaming through a window or doorway. This is the type of “hot spot” we will be discussing today.

When a subject is placed near a hot spot, the light bouncing onto the subject will be brighter than background areas making it and optimal spot to apply the inverse square law to light and photography. In the upcoming photos, notice how the ISO is typically pretty low for indoor shooting.

I always like to include a nerdy tidbit for those like me who like to know the technicals behind why we do what we do and why it works…so those cool photographers who don’t care, skip to the next paragraph. For those nerds like me, keep reading!

Wikipedia defines the inverse square law (when applied to photography)  as “the inverse-square law is used to determine the “fall off” or the difference in illumination on a subject as it moves closer to or further from the light source”. Simply put, that just means that the subject is most illuminated when closer to the light source (duh!) but as the distance away from the light source is doubled, you get a quarter of the intensity or amount of light.

So, what will you see in camera? The the background will appear much darker the farther away from the light source. The brighter the light source, the greater the fall off. This is the “how” behind images with really dark backgrounds that appear almost black. And because the way a camera “sees” isn’t as advanced as the way the human eye can see (the camera can’t record the dynamic range that the eye can see), often, this effect is exaggerated with a camera.

Nikon 35mm f/1.4G | ISO 250 f/1.4 1/1000

In the following image, the hot spots brighten the shadows a bit on the subject. The main light is the window light (indirect), the hot spot reflect light back into the shadows so that the rest of the image isn’t completely in shadow, but a few details are still maintained, even while blurred.

Nikon 35mm f/1.4G | ISO 250 f/1.8  1/640

Now on to the basics.

Check out Melissa’s post about how to edit an image using dramatic lighting.

Hopefully, if anything, this post has given you some ideas about using unconventional light in your photography. Now, go take a tour of your home and find some new spots to shoot in! Feel free to ask questions in the comment section!